Between the Poles: Autodesk University: Migrating CAD to Enterprise GIS

Geoff Zeiss

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January 2020

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Lidar News
Gene Roe's laser scanning industry news
Open Source Geospatial Foundation OSGEO
OSGeo was created to support the collaborative development of open source geospatial software and promote its widespread use
Proven guidelines for reducing underground infrastructure damage at airports, university, industrial, and commercial campuses, and towns
There are proven measures that an administration, owner, or municipal government responsible for an airport, university, industrial or commercial campus, or town can undertake to reduce the risk of underground utility damage, the associated disruptions to operations and business and the danger for workers and the public.
Sharing information about the location of underground utilities
The U.S. devotes an estimated $10 billion annually to locating underground infrastructure. Every construction project requiring excavation involves significant efforts in locating underground utilities prior to and during construction to reduce the risk of injuries and unexpected project delays. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again. There are successful examples around the world where municipal and regional governments have helped enable a shared underground utility network database.
Growing evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction
Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects. While the UK government has said that "...we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture. Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects. Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.
Progress in geospatial, civil, and BIM interoperability promises efficient workflows for infrastructure
The BIM and geospatial interoperability challenge is the latest symptom of the broader problem of integrating AEC and geospatial workflows, that has contributed to low productivity in the construction sector. After the announcement about a year ago by Jack Dangermond and Andrew Anagnost of a new relationship to build a bridge between Autodesk and ESRI technologies, I thought it a good time to review progress toward interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds.
Geography2050: Accurate location information about underground infrastructure is essential for powering our future planet
I thought it would be worth while to include here a talk I gave at GEOGRAPHY 2050 Powering Our Future Planet at Columbia University in New York about the importance of accurate location information about underground infrastructure for the future development of the energy grid. With some notable exceptions accurately recording the location of subsurface infrastructure including oil, gas, electric power and other energy infrastructure is ignored - perhaps this is a case of out-of-sight is indeed out-of-mind. The reality is that knowing the location of underground energy infrastructure is critical for national security, for disaster planning and management, for public safety and for economic efficiency. Everyone is aware of at least one disaster resulting from or exacerbated by not knowing where our energy infrastructure is - the explosions in San Bruno in California (2010) and Belgium (2004) immediately come to mind.
Deep learning enables automated extraction of building footprints and road networks from satellite imagery
Automated feature extraction from satellite imagery has made major progress in the last year. Accurate building footprints extracted from high resolution satellite imagery are becoming available from companies such as Ecopia, which has just announced a partnership with DigitalGlobe, whose satellites are capable of 30 cm (approximately one foot) resolution. Also NVIDIA has demonstrated the ability to automate detection of many road networks using sophisticated algorithms and multi-spectral high resolution imagery.
BIM + geospatial interoperability would avoid another CAD + GIS quagmire
A specific challenge currently facing the AEC and geospatial industries is integrating building information models (BIM) and geospatial infrastructure and building models. There are parallels between what happened in the 1990s in unsuccessfully addressing CAD+GIS interoperability and the current challenge of BIM+geospatial interoperability. But there are also important differences which provide grounds for optimism that the availability of both BIM and geospatial standards, a vibrant open source geospatial community, and a new willingness on the part of major software players in the BIM and geospatial industries will make it possible to successfully address the latest interoperability challenge facing the AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) and geospatial industries.
BVLOS drones improve power line inspections amid increasing fire and storm risks for utilities | Utility Dive
Transmission line inspections for vegetation management and other purposes are essential in ensuring grid reliability and resilience. We saw the devastating effect of vegetation encroachment in the recent California fires, which in part have been blamed on failure to maintain properly cleared transmission lines. With drones that can cover great distances in a single flight and provide detailed and accurate aerial imagery of transmission lines and other infrastructure, it is now possible to almost completely automate this expensive process. Automating transmission line inspections for vegetation management using BVLOS drones not only saves money, but also could improve the resiliency and reliability of the transmission grid.

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December 03, 2009

Autodesk University: Migrating CAD to Enterprise GIS

At AU I made time to attend an excellent presentation by Lou Ball, who has been in the utility business for over 20 years, on migrating data from CAD drawing files (typically DWGs) to GIS. CAD applications, whether you're talking about AutoCAD or Microstation, are (too) flexible and the challenges are identifying where the data elements you intend to migrate are, cleaning up the data, preparing them for migration. Lou outlined the steps to follow in migrating CAD drawings.

Understand the source data
Map features from source to target
Plan for data cleanup
Develop a migration strategy

Drawing Assessment

Assessing drawings is the first, very important part of migration. Just because a printed drawing looks clean, it still may require a significant effort to identify where the data you're interested in is stored and to prepare the data to be migrated to the GIS. For example, in the case of AutoCAD-based applications, data may be in object data, extended entity data, block attributes, externally linked databases, stored in labels (see the attached image), or something you might have to infer from linestyle and colour.

Lou talked about other typical problems, for example, common line problems, unsnapped lines, lines not split, and no point feature where lines are joined. Blocks also represent challenges.

Data Cleanup Tools

There are several very good tools that can help cleanup data. Lou outlined his experience with each and the types of problems each can help with.

AutoCAD CAD Standards
AutoCAD DesignCenter
Autodesk Map3D Drawing Cleanup
Drawing Cleanup Utility (DCU)

Migration Tools

He outlined the migration tools he has used and the advantages of each.

AcClassify Enterprise
SHP2SDO – Shape to Oracle Spatial
Safe Software® FME™
Autodesk Topobase

Really this is a wealth of information and experience that is invaluable for anyone who has to migrate CAD drawing data to a GIS. You can find Lou's presentation on the Autodesk University web site.

Posted at 08:50 AM in CAD, Sharing Spatial Data, Utility Solutions | Permalink

Between the Poles

Geoff Zeiss

January 2020

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December 03, 2009

Autodesk University: Migrating CAD to Enterprise GIS

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